The Aesthetician and the Cartographer

Sometime around 2006, when everyone and their grandma started cranking out terrible Google Maps mashups, the Cartography world soiled its collective underpants as it looked like the once specialized profession was about to become obsolete. Fear was channeled into outrage at the whole idea of the “democratization of cartography” because it facilitated—encouraged, perhaps—the production of bad maps that ignored everything Cartographers had learned and taught over the years. In other words, “they took our jobs!”

Eventually we all calmed down when we saw that people still appreciated good cartography and there was still a place in the world for us—probably even more room for us than before. Then the tools improved by leaps and bounds, to the point now where it’s possible to use them for good web cartography and it’s easy to make maps beautiful. But it might be time to get uppity again.

There is a potential problem in that last thing: beautiful maps. These are prized an awful lot these days, and I’m worried that it’s distracting everyone from the real essence of cartography and the problems that needed or still need to be solved. There seems to be an idea floating around that Cartography is now winning the War on Bad Maps because we’ve defeated Ugliness. TileMill hype is an easy thing to point to here: consider MapBox’s repeated use of the word “beautiful”; or Brian Timoney’s recent, justified praise of the accessibility and openness of TileMill’s newest capabilities, unfortunately framed in the familiar GIS versus Cartography divide that treats the latter as little more than cosmetic surgery, aesthetic touches separable from the rest of the mapping process. Meanwhile with some regularity a web map project seems to find the ultimate “success” of ending up in an art exhibition or winning the Purtiest Map Evar Award.

It all brings into question what Cartography really is (and isn’t) or needs to be in the modern web mapping world, something I’ve been pondering a lot over the past year. (Big-C “Cartography” is used here to mean the the specific profession, theories, and body of knowledge, not simply the making of any maps.) Yes, a good cartographer has graphic design skills and an eye for beauty, but as a discipline and profession it is not about aesthetics.

Beauty is unquestionably important in cartography. It’s what turns functional maps into good maps and good maps into great maps. And we don’t need to be above putting form over function sometimes. Eye candy sells, and sometimes grabbing attention or being just plain artsy is whole the point of a map. The number of beautiful maps floating around lately, the public appreciation of them, and the proliferation of tools that make them possible are all very pleasing developments. We shouldn’t mistake aesthetics for Cartography itself, though. Cartographic expertise is, in essence, knowing the right way to represent geographic phenomena and data for analytical or various other purposes, and understanding of all stages of the mapping process, not simply knowing how to swoop in at the end and make a map pretty. Sure, we can make every map delicious by wrapping it in metaphorical (or real?) bacon, but it won’t be good for you.*

It’s so much easier to see the aesthetic side of maps than all the informed decisions behind them, and now that it no longer takes specialists to use the production tools and code, aesthetics start to look like the only area where specialized Cartography comes in. We don’t talk about the real Cartography enough for it to be chracterized otherwise. For every blog post or tweet you see about the newest cool graphical capability of Mapnik or d3 or anything else, how many do you see giving advice on when to use it?

Just as we always associated ArcMap with “ugly” and Illustrator with “pretty,” aesthetics continue to be tied to specific tools, and GIS and cartography people still let themselves be defined by the tools they use despite the trends away from reliance on a single piece of software. As usual we have the problem of knowing tools versus knowing concepts. It’s vital to know tools and understand how they work, of course, but in the end they’re only as useful as the operator’s knowledge of cartographic concepts. Today’s tools are new, but a lot of the amazing new capabilities we’re seeing are not new at all; they’re just better implementations. They lower a lot of barriers and have big impacts, sure, but tools are still only tools. BYOCartography.

(When it’s not aesthetics or tools, by the way, it’s the idea that map = data. You can see this in the Apple Maps uproar. But that’s a different kettle of fish for another day.)

I don’t want Cartography to be reduced to mastery of pulling levers to make pretty things. Not because I fear for my career—I can pull levers with the best of them—but rather because it limits the gains in the quality of web mapping. You don’t need to have an advanced degree in Cartography or be an old-school Cartographer to make good maps, but you do need to take the time to understand the when and why of mapping techniques, not just the how.

The traditional Cartographic solution to this kind of problem is to complain and criticize, but we need to point out what’s right more than what’s wrong. (Yeah, yeah, irony here. But think of this post as more of a lament than criticism.) After all, it’s not that bad things are happening—quite the opposite—it’s just that a lot of good things remain invisible and left out of the conversation. So next time you make a killer map, don’t just talk about how you did it; talk also about why you made the design choices you did. Let’s make it understood that there is more to Cartography than aesthetic sensibilities and technical skill, and encourage all mapmakers to be true Cartographers.

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7 thoughts on “The Aesthetician and the Cartographer”

I thing the big difference nowadays is that instead of creating a single map you create twenty one zoom levels of the same map with different levels of detail.

That moves the focus from “how do I put things on a single high resolution map printed on paper” towards “what kind of story do I want to tell from zoom level one to twenty”.

Which maybe requires different skill sets than than in the past (or maybe not). But I would definitely say that trying to fulfill all the new requirements with ArcMap is probably not the most clever thing to do.

This is a great article. I totally agree with the point you are making here. It’s similar to the debate of whether or not GIS is a Science or a Tool (http://www.nps.gov/yose/naturescience/upload/Demystifying-GIS-1997.pdf). Anyone can apply tools (pull levers) but understanding the concepts behind the tools are what make them great and more useful. I feel the same with Cartography, anyone can make a beautiful map these days, especially with the tools available. But for someone to effectively display the geographic data on a map, both beautifully and/or ugly, they must still understand the basic concepts of Cartography to communicate it extensively. The challenge is making sure the tools do not make us lose sight of what define us as geographers/cartographers and move the science forward as quickly as the technology. (http://mapthis.net/2011/08/15/support-the-teaching-geography-is-fundamental-act-tgif/)

Great information. I love the fact that you can use the tools. Making a map is easy now, but making the map into your own is what makes this perfect and very useful. There are many maps out there that doesn’t even look like a map, but with the tools here and the information available that you have given is very knowledgeable. Thank you very much.

Great article, I’m sorry it took me so log to find this. I haven’t been doing my cart blog rounds as much as I used to!

You did a great job of articulating something I’ve been stabbing at since moving back into GIS from “traditional” digital cartography a few years back. That more people were making bad maps (bad meaning both ugly or non-functional, but pretty) at the time was obvious enough. The term “mashup” still gives me shivers. But what I didn’t really get until I started taking GIS courses again was the degree to which GIS dimissed cartography as frivilous, just for dressing up your data at the end of a project. It’s a constant stuggle to try and explain to new GIS students how important cartographic concepts are to thier underlying goals of map communication. And that more than just an asthetic field, cartography and analysis intersect throughout GIS map work.

I’m heartened by the continuing interest in cartography I see but frustrated by the slow reasponse of GIS education to incorporate more cartographic training in thier programs. In a quarter long program where I am now on the “Fundamentals of GIS”, exactly 45 minutes were alloted to cartography.

This is good information. Having taught cartography at a mid-western university for 7 years and having worked professionally as a cartographer I am acquainted with many of the points mentioned. I especially agree with the comment on ugly maps being associated with ArcMap and good maps with Illustrator. In truth, however, many of the best maps I’ve seen recently have been done using a combination of ArcMap and Illustrator. I think Avensa’s MAPublisher is an example of a recent product that facilitates the integration of GIS and Adode’s Illustrator. However, if you’ve been to the annual ESRI conferences in San Diego you’ll see that many good maps are being produced with just ArcMap. Indeed, I recommend Cynthia Brewer’s online ERSI “Map Design” course. She is a professor at Penn State, with excellent cartographic working experience (her mentor was Judy Olso (if my memory is correct). Regardless, her online design course shows a comprehension of educational principles in course organization and content. Hence the course is logical and when you finish, you’ve received a sound background in traditional map design. And she’s also the co-author of the ColorBrewer program (for choosing the right colors in association with map classification schemes) which I also highly recommend and is available online. In short, far too many GIS classes do not spend enough time on traditional cartographic design principles and this accounts for the mass of lousy maps seen at planning commission meetings and elsewhere. Many of them hurt your eyes. Another reason for lousy maps is that geography programs are substituting a GIS course in place of the traditional cartography class. This is for economic reasons and also, there is a lack of academically trained cartographers.
I think that many of the maps produced for newspapers and magazines and by the GIS crowd (yes this is a generalization) show a lack of comprehension of statistical classification methods. But that’s another story. Good maps must be attentive to the map audience, the available technology, good data analysis and finally map design principles.